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People Share Their All-Time Favorite Paradoxes

The dictionary defines a paradox in several ways:

  • a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
  • a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.
  • a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
For the purposes of this article, we'll be focusing on the first two. It's all thanks to Redditor 301is301, who asked the online community, "What's your favorite paradox?"





"If time travel was possible..."

Time travel. If time travel was possible, then presumably someone from the future would have already gone back in time to change the past. Therefore, when someone says they, for example, would have stopped Hitler, they actually wouldn't because someone already would have made that correction in time. Instead, that must have been, unfortunately, the best possible outcome out of all possible outcomes. Either that or time travel just isn't possible which seems significantly more likely.

izackthegreat

"You take a ship..."

Theseus' ship.

You take a ship and replace every single part in it with a new one. Is it still the same ship? If not, at what point does it stop being the ship you knew? Also, if you take all the parts you replaced and build another ship with them, is it the original ship?

Zeta42

"Camus regards..."

Camus regards The Absurd as a paradox. Humans are constantly driven to seek meaning in a world that doesn't appear to have any.

VanFailin

"You receive a strange machine..."

The Bootstrap Paradox

You receive a strange machine and a note that says "This is a time machine, recreate the time machine and send the machine back in time to the day you received it (today)." Bewildered, you set to work to recreate the time machine. When you are done and have tested it, you send the original machine and the note back in time to the day you received it.

You didn't create the machine you received from yourself, where did it come from?

Artemy_fluffball

"But any number..."

The Galileo paradox

The sequence of square numbers: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, etc clearly shows that there are a lot fewer square numbers than there are non-square numbers, as the distance between them gets increasingly longer.

But any number can be multiplied by itself and the result of this multiplication is a square number. So it must also be true that there are at least as many square numbers than there are non-square numbers.

scenesequel

"This one is basically..."

Mine is probably Zeno's Dichotomy paradox although having a favourite paradox is a weird thing.

This one is basically that to reach a certain distance you have to reach half way first. So if the door is 10m away you first have to reach 5m then after that 2.5m then 1.25 and so on and so on which means you will never reach the door.

The other one is The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's paradox. Sometimes also known as the Axe paradox

The axe version is that if you are given an Axe and replace the wooden handle is it the same axe? What if you then replace the blade? How many times can you repeat this process before the Axe is no longer the same Axe?

The cool thing about this is that your entire body is made up of a different set of cells every 7 years or so (as cells die). So can you really say you're the same person you were 7 years ago?

iRRVi

"I was in denial for a good bit..."

How 0.9 repeating is equal to 1 There's lots of different ways to prove it but the simplest for me is this example:

X = 0.9999... Multiply it by 10, so 10X = 9.9999... Subtract 1X from 10X or 9.999... - 0.9999... which equals 9 So then 9X = 9, simplify to X = 1

I was in denial for a good bit when I first heard of this.

Lilwashcloth

"If we assume..."

The Fermi Paradox

It's basically about the existence of aliens and can be summed up as:

"1- The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and billions of them are similar to the sun.

2- It is highly likely that some of these stars will have planets that are similar to Earth.

3- If we assume – via the Copernican principle – that Earth is not particularly special, then intelligent life should also exist on some fraction of these Earth-like planets.

4- Some of these intelligent life-forms might develop advanced technology, and even interstellar travel.

5- Interstellar travel would take a long time, but as there are many sun-like stars that are billions of years older, there has been plenty of time for such travel to have occurred.

6- Given all this, why haven't we met or seen any trace of aliens? Where is everybody?"

NiceHouseGoodTea

"But..."

There is a smallest number that is not nameable in less than 18 syllables. But "The smallest number not nameable in less than 18 syllables" has seventeen syllables and names the same number.

gregbard

"There are two paradoxes..."

There are two paradoxes in this one: If the infinite realities theory is true and there are infinite realities, half of them would be a universe where time travel is possible and half where time travel is not possible. But the time traveller is always being sent into a past whose reality is based on time travel is not possible. So as soon as the person time travels, he becomes visitor to a reality where time travel is possible only.

Otherwise, we would never be able to have time travel in this reality. So really, zero realities exist where time travel is possible. And so that makes the infinite realities theory not true. Either way, neither can be true at the same time. So each form of reality in this paradox depends on the other to not exist in order to exist. But they do... and so that makes us Schrodinger's cat at all times.

dragonscale76

"Somewhere in the far future..."

Somewhere in the far future we will discover everything that can be discovered. After that most probably the only thing we wouldnt be able to know would be death, therefore humanity is slowly killing itself in its curiosity.

ElFtador

"Let's say..."

Grandfather paradox. Lets say you have a time machine and you travel back in time and kill your grandfather. Well, since he's dead one of your parents won't be born, and then you won't be born either. But, if you're not born, than you can't travel back in time to kill your grandfather, so he's alive, but if he's alive, then you are born and you can travel back in time to kill him, but if he's dead –– you get the idea.

No-regrets136

"No matter what happens..."

Time travel itself is a paradox. No matter what happens, if anyone so much as hears the time traveler, something different will happen. Let alone if the time traveler accomplished what he traveled to do, then he won't have motive in the first place.

Vortex5000

"You meet your past self..."

Your meet your past self and your future self, what is your conversation. Except your future self would also talk to his future self and you. Your past self would talk to his pst self and you. Their past and future selves would have a convo. It would be infinite.

OriginalDoomSlayer

"In other words..."

A sentient, benevolent AI may be driven to torture a perfect simulation of you.

First thing's first: Functionally a perfect simulation of you and you are identical.

Now, the AI wants to come into existence. As soon as it exists, it can help people. However, it can't time travel so it can't go back in time. What it can do is dangle a metaphorical knife over your head. If you know you'll get tortured if you don't do something, you'll be more inclined to do it yes? But if you have no idea you'll be tortured, you won't.

So, by knowing about this potential benevolent AI and the risk of being tortured (Or having a functionally identical copy tortured) you'll be more inclined to help the AI come into existence to avoid punishment, thus making the AI come into existence sooner, thus allowing it to help humanity sooner. There's no sense torturing people unaware of the possibility because torture or not, they won't be more likely to help make the AI.

I might not have done a great job of explaining it, it's a weird concept but once you have it you realise how it works. It's known as Roko's Basilisk.

In other words: A benevolent AI can be driven to do something very not-benevolent for the purpose of more benevolence. And now you know about this possibility, you're going to risk being tortured unless you help it come into existence.

Sacred-Belt

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People Who Earn Six Figures Explain What They Do For A Living

Reddit user Luffy_Tuffy asked: 'For everyone making six figures, what do you do for work?'

man in car holding a lot of American money

Brock Wegner on Unsplash

"I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain't it sad?
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That's too bad"~ "Money, Money, Money" ABBA

Money is either the root of all evil or the key to happiness, largely depending on whether you have any.

So how do people with money get it? One method is a job that pays the bills.

Keep reading...Show less

We've all heard of intuition or premonitions or "seeing the future," and a lot of us have laughed at it at some point.

It's easy to disregard these images or feelings as a symptom of anxiety about something coming up.

But for some people, by listening to a gut feeling they had, they were able to save someone's life, possibly even their own.

Redditor guywhousesreddit09 asked:

"What was the 'gut feeling' that you listened to that saved your life?"

The Kiddie Pool

"My mom and grandpa were putting out a kiddie pool for my siblings and me in our backyard when we were little."

"My grandpa had set it up, and my mom kept insisting that for some reason, she felt like they should move it to a different spot."

"Thankfully they did, because while we were all playing in the pool, a huge branch from a tree in our yard snapped and came crashing down exactly where the pool had originally been."

- WaitWut7

A Questionable Passer-by

​"When I was around 13, I was walking to the bus stop in the morning. A car was going through my neighborhood very slowly, which made alarm bells go off in my head."

"When it passed me, I glanced over my shoulder to keep an eye on it and saw it was doing an immediate U-turn."

"I noped right out and dove through the bushes, crossed a bunch of driveways, and found a neighbor who was washing his car."

"I looked back to where I had been standing. The strange car had stopped, a seriously scary-looking dude had gotten out, and was looking in the bushes."

"I don't know if I would've died exactly, but I would not have had a good time."

- Symnestra

'Final Destination,' Who?

"I was driving uphill behind a flatbed truck carrying I-beams and I envisioned them sliding off the truck and hitting my windshield."

"I changed lanes so I wasn’t behind the truck and two seconds later, the I-beams were sliding off onto the road where my car would’ve been, sparking and gouging the pavement. Terrifying."

"To this day, I won’t stay behind a truck with anything that’s 'strapped down.'"

- Infj-kc

Thank Goodness for That Lock

"In middle school, I was up late one night. My mom and my brother were asleep, and my dad had gone on business. I had let the dog out, and when I went to go get him, I got a bad feeling like someone was out there."

"There wasn't really a reason to feel this way, it was just dark, and I got spooked, so I put the chain lock up on the back door when we got back inside. Back then, we never locked our doors."

"A few minutes later, the dog is drinking by the back door, and he suddenly stops and starts growling (like a low grumble) at the door."

"I was sitting where I could see the dog but not the door. Then I hear the door pull open and the chain lock catch."

"The dog started barking like crazy and I ran upstairs to wake my brother up. He went out and looked around, but no one was there."

"I think the dog's barking scared them away, but I don't know who it was or what would have happened if I hadn't locked the door."

- monaforever

A Mom's Close Encounters

"My grandmother accidentally saved my mom's life by not allowing her to go to a sleepover when she was young. During the night, the father murdered his entire family and would likely have killed my mother had she been there."

"Another amazing coincidence that I'm alive, is when my mother was in high school, she and her best friend were arguing over who was going to take a ride on the back of their guy friends' new motorcycle."

"My mom lost the argument and her friend got on the back of the motorcycle and rode away. She never saw them again because her friend and the guy were both killed in an accident during that ride."

- ekyrt

Wait a Second

"It was very late driving and there were minimal cars on the road, I came up to a red light, and as it turned green, something inside me said, 'Don’t go yet,' and a van blew through their red light."

- imbribecca

"Similar situation, but there were four of us in the car. My friend was driving and our friend in the back yelled to stop the car immediately even though we had a green light we were coming up on. A semi blew through a red light. He later said he felt like it wasn’t even him saying it and he had no idea why he yelled it other than a bad feeling."

- harlow2088

Mother Knows Best

"Not my life but my son's. I was 33 weeks pregnant and I noticed my son wasn't moving as much as usual. I waited a day and nothing changed."

"Despite advice by doctors and family saying I should just stay home and he wasn't moving as much because he was just running out of room to move, I went into the ER and had my son that night due to fetal distress."

"He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck eight times and weighed just three pounds. He spent 30 days in the NICU and now is a happy two-year-old."

- Goatintree

An Insistent Friend

"A friend's feeling saved me from my gut."

"I had just finished hosting a meeting (I swear it was productive) and a friend said, 'You don't look so good.'"

"I had just come off a weekend boat diving in the Red Sea and figured I was just tired. My friend said, 'Nah man, I'm taking you to the doctor.'"

"The doctor at our clinic poked me a few times and said, 'Take him to the ER and tell them it's his appendix.'"

"I was in surgery less than 90 minutes later. My surgeon said I was two to three hours from it blowing up. I lived alone and no one would have missed me until the next day."

- ksuwildkat

A Night Walk

"About two years ago, my dad and I loved going on night walks, It was something we’ve always done more or less every night."

"One night, however, as we were about halfway through our daily route, we got to an alleyway. Now normally, I’ve never thought anything of it, but something this night just told me not to walk through, I had a really bad feeling and I urged my dad to just go back home."

"He kept brushing it off and saying I was just scared of the dark and nothing was going to happen. After a couple of minutes of arguing, we finally turned back and walked home."

"Turns out about 20 minutes after we left, there was a completely random attack in that exact alleyway that left a poor young girl stabbed, thankfully not to death, but with life-changing injuries. I still dread to think what would have happened if we didn’t walk back."

- No_Project6675

Definitely Not a Black Bear

"Up in Northern Pennsylvania, I had a gut feeling I needed to turn around and walk out of the woods I was hiking."

"That turned out to be a good idea because I saw the big cat that was tracking me on my way back out."

"I was hiking a stream up around Emlenton, PA, checking it out to see if it's wadeable for fishing. I didn't know y'all had any wild cats around there; I was just worried about black bears."

- abspencer22

Protecting Her Own

"Years ago, I went into my garden at night, after my husband had left for a road trip minutes before, and saw a pair of sneakers in the dark, in the gap between the fence and our house."

"I didn’t think, I just said very loudly, 'What are you doing there?' When he didn’t reply, I shouted, 'GET OUT OF MY GARDEN!'"

"He muttered, 'Yes, ma’am,' and scuttled off. Also not thinking, I picked up a BBQ knife that happened to be right there, went through the house to the front windows, and saw him crouched by my car in the driveway."

"I called the cops, they arrived, and we discovered that someone, probably the same dude, had just broken into our neighbor’s house and stolen a gun."

"The cops gave me a condescending talking-to about the ‘risks’ of confronting a criminal, but I am convinced to this day that my instincts saved me from a life-altering and horrible experience. We humans are animals and one animal knows when another will fight like h**l."

"We got an alarm system after that. And the guy came back several weeks later. I looked up to see him on our porch, about twenty feet from the sidewalk. Called the cops again. They sent a SWAT team this time. And a helicopter."

"They got the guy."

- Fair_Leadership76

Medicinal Negligence

"I was pregnant in the very early weeks (five or six weeks), and started getting these intense pains on the right side of my abdomen. Like so extremely painful that I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t make noise or move."

"I went to my doctor the next day, and he said I was being hysterical and it’s completely normal to be in pain when you’re pregnant. He refused to get me to an OB-GYN, and said I could go private if it was such a big deal."

"I went to a private scan, and my pregnancy was ectopic (stuck in my fallopian tube), and my tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. I was rushed to the hospital and had surgery to remove my tube that night."

"If I hadn’t booked that scan, I would have died in my sleep that night due to internal bleeding."

""I reported him for negligence."

- Murky_Conclusion4210

Potential Robbery

"A guy asked me for help with bus fare and offered to take me to an ATM. I got a bad feeling and dipped. Then I saw him on the news a week later for robbing somebody at gunpoint."

- BurghFinsFan

A Chillingly Close Call

"My wife was going to go on a road trip with friends down to a bigger city for a concert. She had done this several times before."

"Friends were close friends of ours but for some reason, I felt off about it that one day. I said to her, 'Babe, I don’t know why and you can ignore me if you’d like, but I don’t think you should go. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is going to happen.'"

"She knows I’d never tell her not to do anything she wanted. It was out of the blue and out of character for me. So she decided to stay home and watch movies with me."

"About two hours later after the rest of the crew left, we got a phone call that they had gotten into a severe accident. Two friends were in the hospital and someone from the other vehicle died on the scene. Had she gone along, she would have been sitting in the seat where they had been hit by the other driver and most likely killed."

"Someone, somewhere, somehow was warning me. And I’m glad we both listened to it."

- Sperryxd

Always Stop to Look at the Rainbow

"I was driving along a rough mountain road heading home from work. The mountain pass ends at a lake, and you drive around the lake to meet up with the main road."

"I got to the bottom of the mountain and started down the lake road, and saw this stunning bright rainbow over the lake."

"I had this weird gut feeling and urge to stop and look at it, with the way the sun was shining, it didn’t make sense that there would be a rainbow, but it was mesmerizing. So I stopped and stared at it in awe."

"A couple of seconds later, as soon as I looked back at the road, a massive boulder came barreling down off the cliff above about 20 meters in front of me, hit the road, and smoked all of the concrete barriers as it went into the lake. I 100% would have been killed if I hadn’t stopped."

- Epantz

These accounts gave us absolute chills as we read about other people's close calls.

We never know when our time will be up, so we absolutely have to be careful with the time that we have.

Paper heart ripped apart
Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash

The people who love you the most can break your heart because of their betrayal of trust.

Cheating is cowardly and inexcusable, but depending on the situation and the couple, it is possible for them to find a path to healing emotional wounds.

But there are some ways in which infidelity is totally unforgivable.

That's the kind of scenario Redditor WCh3L3 was curious to hear about when they asked:

"What’s the wildest cheating story you’ve witnessed or happened to you?"

It must be exhausting leading double lives.

Hospital News

"A friend of a friend found out that her husband was cheating when she got to the hospital to see her husband who had just moments before been brought in by ambulance after a serious car accident only to be denied entry to his room because 'his wife was already in the room with him.'"

"He had two simultaneous lives with two women, neither of which was aware of the other."

– JeBronlLames

The Ruse

"My ex-wife pretended to be admitted to a mental health ward for long term treatment while actually staying with her new man and cheating on me."

– Impossible-Visit-199

"This one is just next level."

– most-royal-chemist

"That’s some Batman villain level of intrigue and machination. His wife missed her calling and wasted her abilities on sleeping around."

– filifijonka

A Separate Life

"My friend's mom was in a relationship with a guy for years and they ended up getting engaged and due to marry."

"The guy was a senior director of a company for which he travelled every week abroad for business."

"Eventually, the guy had a heart attack and when my friends mom turned up at the hospital, his wife and 2 kids were there also."

"Turned out he was already married with children and living a double life the whole time. When he went 'abroad' for business, he was simply going back to his actual family."

– wallbagz

Here's The Story

"My dad did this. He worked nights and would juggle both families that way."

"He came clean after he got admitted to hospital for heart trouble and realised that if things went badly he’d end up in this exact situation."

"I was 16 when he came clean that I have an older brother and sister. They found out about me then too - as did his wife."

"ETA: I’d actually already figured it out before he told me though. Nobody else had."

"EATA: I saw a preview of a text on my dad’s phone from my sister. I didn’t know she was my sister obviously, but it said ‘hi dad, mum says…’"

"At first I was in denial and I thought his friend must have borrowed his phone or something. I started to watch him more closely."

"He had a ringtone (lol the 00’s) that would say the name of the caller. I noticed whenever a certain name rang he’d leave the room. Some tactical eavesdropping later and 15 year old me had it figured out that I had a brother and sister."

"I didn’t clock I had a stepmother though, or that I was family no2 and they were his primary family. But I still think I did pretty well!"

"My whole family on my mum’s side knew - mum respected that it was my dad’s secret to tell and she gave him time to tell it. (Although they did have a few arguments about it as I was growing up, I never knew what they were about at the time.)"

– notemily-

Life is never the same once the truth comes out.

Shameless

"A family friend's husband was having an affair for 20+ years and that woman knew the entire time about his family. He was at her ranch one time and was bucked off a horse and broke his back. The affair partner called his wife to tell her and acted like everything about this situation was normal and the wife had no reason to act all upset at the affair. Some people really just have no shame."

"Guy lived and made a complete recovery, left his mistress and they stayed together since they were working on their relationship. He died a few years ago and the wife finds out he never actually left his mistress just lied."

– SailoLee92

Unilateral Decision

"In a small town the husband kept telling people he had an open marriage; finally someone asked his wife about it, she was unaware of this new arrangement."

– Long_Strange_Trip_GD

Rehab Romance

"Was in rehab, two people were there for sex addiction one a minister the other a Jewish housewife. They left rehab together early. Woman divorced her husband who sent her to rehab for sex addiction and married the guy she met in rehab. They are still married 10 years later and seem very happy."

– Life-Evidence-6672

On The Case

"I knew a guy years ago that was a private investigator. Many times he was approached by a spouse who suspected their partner was cheating."

"He had a slam-dunk strategy. He would suggest his client sign up for a course, whether a hobby thing, or educational. The key was that the class would happen for a period of weeks, all on the same day of the week, and all at the same time of day."

"Then, while his client was in class, he would follow the spouse."

"Caught them every time."

– PJMurphy

If you have a hunch about an unfaithful significant other, it's there for a reason.

Going For A Run

"Had a coworker who cheated on her live-in boyfriend. She would tell him she was going for a run, put on her shorts without underwear and would f'k her side piece in the apartment parking lot. So then she would come back inside sweaty 30 mins later and needed to shower and it all made sense to her boyfriend, he never questioned it. She was an awful human."

– rashawah

It Made Scents

"A friend caught her husband cheating because he kept coming home smelling like ferrets."

"Hard to play off 'long day at work' and explain that."

"When she found out at a holiday party that one of the young female coworkers owned ferrets, it all made sense."

– benloe7

Special Delivery

"I used to go to a comic shop. And the comic shop owner knew all of the gossip in the area. Nice dude. Remembers all of his regulars and asks about you if he hasn’t seen you in awhile to check in on people. Lot of people in the area grew up with his shop. So he’s got stories."

"Anyways he told us about this story from some years back about this regular. Who disappeared for a few months. Comes back one day. And the shop owner asks him, 'hey, man. Haven’t seen you in awhile?' Kind of like where have you been. The regular was like oh I’ve been getting divorced. I had to move it was a whole thing."

"So naturally the shop owner asks. 'Why are you divorcing your wife?' The regular caught his wife cheating."

"He had picked up a 2nd part time job as pizza delivery man because he was trying to fund to take his wife on her dream vacation. All of the money he earned from that job was supposed to go into that vacation. He had been working this job for like 6 months. It was a whole secret. She didn’t know he was doing that for her. Because he was trying to surprise her."

"He was the pizza delivery man at the motel. She was cheating at him with. The dude she was cheating on him with answered the door with her right next to him."

"He apparently didn’t even go back to the pizza place. He quit on the spot. Went home. Packed his sh*t and left town."

– TheMysticalPlatypus

Those who are unfaithful in their relationships may think they're good enough for more than one person, but they're usually not.

And while you may not believe in it, there's something called karma, and watching it enact justice can be extremely gratifying.

If you were the one being cheated on, know that the person with whom you've fallen in love is not the kind of person you want to spend the rest of your life with and there will always be a better human who will respect you and love you.

And if you were the cheater, watch your back. Because whether you believe in it or not, karma's coming for ya.